On Thu, 21 Oct 2010 14:16:36 -0700, George Georgalis <george@galis.org> wrote:
> I'd like to use runit and svlogd as a user in a couple
> applications (eg x11 sessions and desktop widgets) and I was
> wondering what experiences people have had with this?

Hi, George.  I have much experience running runit as a user.  On systems
where I don't have administrative access, I typically use cron to start
runsvdir on boot (as well as checking that it continues to run).

I have also been experimenting with "user runsvdir" instances that are
controlled by the system runsvdir instance.  If the user has a ~/.sv
directory, the user runsvdir process manages run dirs in that directory.
It works very well, and I use it control a lot of user daemons that I
run, including pulseaudio, mpd, urxvtd, offlineimap, msva, etc.  If I
ever get the time, I hope to turn this into a package that would allow
admins to easily offer runsvdir service to their users.

I'd be happy to answer any specific questions you have.

> It looks like both socklog and runit require a package/upgrade
> rewrite since they don't accept any configuration, but that should
> be straightforward.

I'm not sure what you mean by this.  I'm also not sure why socklog would
be relevant if you're interested in running runit as a normal user.
socklog is a syslogd replacement, and at least requires being root to
start, unless there's something I don't understand.

jamie.